Lee Stanton outfitted his oceanfront residence in Laguna Beach, California, with a collection of treasures sourced from his eponymous Los Angeles antiques gallery; the house was built in collaboration with Teale Architecture.

Lee Stanton outfitted his oceanfront residence in Laguna Beach, California, with a collection of treasures sourced from his eponymous Los Angeles antiques gallery; the house was built in collaboration with Teale Architecture.

Lee Stanton outfitted his oceanfront residence in Laguna Beach, California, with a collection of treasures sourced from his eponymous Los Angeles antiques gallery; the house was built in collaboration with Teale Architecture.

This article originally appeared in the October 2013 issue of Architectural Digest.

Welcome to Arcade at Secret Cove” reads a small bronze plaque at the entrance gate of Lee Stanton’s home. To the right of the sign, an allée of fruit trees frames a statue of Mercury on a stone plinth; to the left, a steep drive descends through stands of pine and arbutus to a seemingly timeworn house with leaded windows, a pitched roof, and a turret. Inside that tower, a winding stone staircase leads from the front door to an antiques-filled drawing room whose landscape paintings, lovely as they are, can hardly compete with the enchanting scenery outside—waves breaking on the sandy shore below, gulls playing tag in the fog.

Visitors may be forgiven for imagining that they’ve arrived at an English manor on the coast of Dorset rather than an ocean-front residence in Laguna Beach, California. In fact, that’s the whole idea. “I wanted to create an environment where you felt transported to a different time and place,” says Stanton, a prominent Los Angeles antiques dealer, lounging on the drawing room’s balcony. Specifically, he had in mind Britain during the Arts and Crafts era. “From my buying trips in the English countryside, I started to study the work of two great architects, Sir Edwin Lutyens and Baillie Scott,” the Anglophile explains. “Both borrowed techniques and elements from many periods and countries, and that’s what I wanted to do here because my collections are very eclectic.”

A flimsy beach house with a flat roof stood on the property when Stanton acquired it two decades ago. He kept the structure as it was for a couple of years before hiring local architect Mark Teale to help him mold it into the closest possible approximation of a generations-old country home. They spent another two years on design and construction, taking time and care to achieve the layered, evolved impression Stanton wanted—and has continued to refine since. The dining room’s paneled walls, for instance, were inspired by a set of 19th-century English doors. The circa-1840 oak spiral staircase they installed between the second floor and third-story guest loft determined the latter’s campaign theme, as folding furniture was about the only thing Stanton could get up the stairway at first (he later built a trapdoor to bring in a few larger pieces). And in the drawing room, Stanton and Teale put in a cove ceiling with coffered beams to give the space a grand sense of scale while adhering to local roof-height restrictions.

With walls of mottled Venetian plaster, floors of wide oak planks, and a rich mingling of Continental furnishings, many of the rooms have a formality not generally associated with beach houses. But there’s no shortage of comfortable seating. If visitors don’t kick off their shoes and flop down on the drawing room’s Charles II daybed, the nearby corduroy-covered 19th-century English sofa offers further invitation for repose. Stanton, who seemingly was born to deal in antiques (his grandfather restored them, his parents collected them, his sister once sold them), has a utilitarian attitude when it comes to his possessions. “These pieces have been lived with for centuries,” he says. “If they’ve lasted that long, they need to be used and appreciated today.” Annie, his pet Shih-poo, would concur.

Some of the most alluring parts of the house are the atmospheric, modestly sized bedrooms. The master suite, a.k.a. “the sleeping den,” consists of an alcove not much bigger than its Italian Empire bed and an adjoining sitting area that can be closed off at night using curtains Stanton made from a needlepoint tapestry. The guest loft is equally evocative, its walls and attic ceiling clad in Belgian linen and decorated with colonial property deeds that complement the campaign chests and chairs. “Visitors love it,” Stanton enthuses. “They feel like they’re camping out.” (There is another spare suite on the ground level.)

In a ground-floor sitting room, Stanton arranged a vintage French cocktail table, a pair of circa-1840 lounge chairs, and a sofa of his own design in front of a stone mantel from an English country estate; the curtains are made of a Rose Tarlow Melrose House fabric, and the walls are painted in Benjamin Moore’s Linen Sand.

Even the kitchen is transporting, with stone floors, a heavily patinated 19th-century copper clock, and an antique wall frieze depicting scenes from the French tragedy Paul et Virginie. The room’s eastern views of nearby Mediterranean-inspired hillside homes remind Stanton of Tuscany “when you look out over the rooftops.” While the house is for the most part oriented to its coastal setting, Stanton has hardly neglected its inland side, where he tends to a thriving herb-and-vegetable garden. Guests are sent off with jars of seasoning made from homegrown basil, lovage, chives, and peppers. A mulberry patch, meanwhile, rouses in Stanton memories of berry-picking excursions at a beloved manor in Somerset.

“Maybe I watched Jane Eyre and Great Expectations too many times,” he muses wryly, moments after spotting a pod of dolphins capering just beyond the crashing surf. “But I just always pictured a lifestyle away from the hustle and bustle of the everyday.” Welcome to Arcadia at Secret Cove. **

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